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Flood victims want Cameron to do more on climate

RESIDENTS in areas affected by this year’s flooding were unhappy with the Government’s response, a survey has found.

Three out of five people polled in Oxfordshire, West London, Somerset and Cornwall said they were not satisfied with the reaction from ministers to the severe weather which hit Britain over the winter.

A total of 1,000 adults took part in the survey for the Climate Coalition, with one in five saying they were more worried about climate change following the widespread flooding in southern England.

John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, which is part of the coalition, said: “These floods show beyond doubt that Britain can’t pull up a drawbridge to keep itself safe from the risks of climate change.

“It’s time our government got serious about pushing for real action across the UK and Europe to slash the polluting emissions that are driving more extreme weather.”

The results of the survey have been published ahead of a meeting on climate change and energy in Brussels for European leaders, which will be attended by Prime Minister and Witney MP David Cameron.

Mr Sauven said: “The European Union summit is David Cameron’s first test to prove that he has learned the lessons from the floods and is taking climate security seriously.”

“There’s a whole new constituency of people, including many living in Mr Cameron’s own county, who have experienced the brutal force of flooding for the first time.”

And Ben Phillips, the campaigns and policy director at Oxford-based development charity Oxfam, said: “The recent extreme weather in the UK offered us all a glimpse of what climate change could mean for us in the future.

Comments (1)

The name of the sponsors of the petition says it all, a very misleading headline.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of the whole climate change debate, the simple and sad fact is that it is a global issue. Whatever we do in this country does not somehow exempt us from the storms, flooding etc. which might (or might not) result from it. We have no control over the pace of economic development in places like China, India and Brazil.

What flood victims 'want' is action to prevent their homes being flooded. At a practical level, this means measures to mitigate the effects of changes already taking place, as well as pushing the more general case.

The name of the sponsors of the petition says it all, a very misleading headline.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of the whole climate change debate, the simple and sad fact is that it is a global issue. Whatever we do in this country does not somehow exempt us from the storms, flooding etc. which might (or might not) result from it. We have no control over the pace of economic development in places like China, India and Brazil.
What flood victims 'want' is action to prevent their homes being flooded. At a practical level, this means measures to mitigate the effects of changes already taking place, as well as pushing the more general case.Gunslinger